


horribly, brutally honest

by kuro49



Series: thirty days of writing '18 [13]
Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Drabble, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-08-01 09:15:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16281842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuro49/pseuds/kuro49
Summary: If funerals and coffins are the things Chuck thinks about, here he is with the best ones yet: his Conn-Pod surrounds him, and if this is looking to be a watery one, he can think of much worse. If death is what he fears, well, he thinks he has made peace with that.





	horribly, brutally honest

**Author's Note:**

> prompt: horribly, brutally honest. it might be five years since the release of the movie but these two are still my best boys.

 

There is nothing broken inside of him. If funerals and coffins are the things Chuck thinks about, here he is with the best ones yet: his Conn-Pod surrounds him, and if this is looking to be a watery one, he can think of much worse.

If death is what he fears, well, he thinks he has made peace with that.

 

When Chuck’s initial drift compatibility testing comes back and he shows an aptitude to nobody else, Herc knows how this goes and how this will end. It is his thoughts in a repetition that comes around and around and Herc voices it despite his reluctance. 

 

You kill a Kaiju. You come home.

You don’t, well, you don’t. 

 

“Do you think it is fair?”

A father asks his son, like a world that ends with the two of them facing the mouth of hell still has a definition of what fair is. Like it matters at all when Herc is prepared to end this before their first fight in a Jaeger.

“It being what, dad?”

There is a list that goes on and on, unravels like infinity is a thing they can still grasp between their fingers.

“It being,” he pauses, “here,” he pauses again like he can stall the truth, “with me.”

Herc is a sentimental old man. But Chuck is not cruel even when he tells him this like it matters at all. Here are two men wondering what the answer to all of this might be.

“I fought for a long time to get here.” Chuck says to him.

And Herc knows this. Chuck is not trying to punish him, he knows that rationally. But Herc wishes he would. He deserves that much. An apology taken from between his teeth. Herc hates that he cannot offer it out of his own volition. But when do Hansen men give when they can take. It still doesn’t change the sentiments here.

“And I fought even longer to keep you out.”

 

The question has never once been what Charles Hansen is.

(The answer remains: A legacy, a martyr, a sacrifice before his time. He is a product of this world and that is the truth.)

The question is this: what is a father without a son? 

 

Chuck Hansen is thinking of the future.

He is thinking of none.

His end in salt, in water, in bright neon blue among the crashing waves. And it comes repeating itself, round and round like an ouroboro that opens wide to swallow itself whole. _They_ come around in circles, toe to heel, his boots stepping on his father’s heel, his teeth at his father’s throat. They repeat themselves. They go in circles. 

They end where they start. They end with each other.

It isn’t supposed to end like _this_.

 


End file.
